Angry Birds developer Rovio tells TechCrunch that it expects to make over $1 million in monthly revenues from the free-to-play
version of its popular bird-catapulting game.

"By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month
with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds," Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka told TechCrunch.

The iPhone version of
the game costs money, but the Android version is self-published and free. The game makes money off ads it serves up to the
user. The Android version of the game has been downloaded over five million times from the Android Market. Vesterbacka also
told TechCrunch that the Angry Birds series has an 80 percent retention rate, based on the number of players that return to
download updates.

..And in other news, the sky is blue. What makes some comment threads longer than others? Bad attitudes
and surly comments, apparently. That is the conclusion of a study about online interaction conducted by a team of Slovenian
and British researchers .

A group of Slovenian and British researchers used a technique called "sentiment
analysis" to identify emotional content in BBC's online discussion forums and digg.com.

The team's special
algorithms searched for keywords, emoticons, and "subtle linguistic markers" like misspellings, which were then
used to calculate a "happiness score" for each post. The researchers found that longer discussion threads tended
to be overwhelmingly emotional and negative than shorter discussions threads. The longer threads tended to begin with
negative comments, researchers found. Read More

The Entertainment Consumer Association sent out an alert this afternoon to its members urging them to
write the Federal Communications Commission to tell them that America wants the net neutrality promised by the president
during his campaign.

The ECA objects to the plan proposed by the FCC because it gives too many concessions to interest
groups and service providers, excludes wireless providers from any new rules, and gives providers a green light to start
using tiered pricing models based on the amount of bandwidth / data used. The ECA has set up a "call to action"
page here.

Below is the complete letter
from Brett Schenker, Online Advocacy Manager for the ECA: Read More

An interesting submission in Slashdot's "Ask Slashdot"
section solicits the help of commenters on a DMCA takedown notice for an Android game called "Super
Pac."

The developer asks the community what he should do because Namco sent a DMCA takedown notice to him, which
in turn got his Pac-Man-like Android title pulled from Google’s Android marketplace. Now he can't sell his game and
doesn't know what to do. Here is the question:

What does everyone want for [insert your holiday of choice here] ? According to TimetoPlayMag.com's
annual "America’s Wish List: The Must-Have Toys, Games, and Video Games," everyone wants an Xbox Kinect. At
least in the videogame category..

In October and November, TimetoPlay.com readers were asked to vote for their
favorite items in 17 categories to create America’s Wish List. After the data was sifted through, the site picked the
top choices, which are listed below by category, product, and manufacturer. For more information check out www.PeoplesPlayAwards.

If you are planning your last will and testament in the state of Oklahoma, you now have to worry about
what to do with your virtual belongings. According to a report in the IB Times (thanks EZK), a new state law in Oklahoma gives estate executors and administrators
the power to "access, administer, or terminate" social media and online accounts.

According to former state
Rep. Ryan Kiesel (D-Seminole), a co-author of House Bill 2800 (before he left office), the law is meant to remind people
that, when they are planning what happens to their real-world estate, they should probably figure out what they want done
with their virtual stuff as well. Read More

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's John Walker responds to the Panorama TV episode on game addiction (it aired on BBC
1 in the UK last night) with an editorial of his own. While acknowledging that he does not "possess the evidence that
gaming does not cause addiction," Walker lays into the Panorama episode and its host for producing a slapdash expose on
gaming addiction, leading viewers to conclusions without providing any real evidence.

For example, the show promised
to provide details on the secret mechanics that keep gamers "coming back for more," but that secret gaming sauce
was never revealed during the program. Likewise, while the host talked a lot about studies that claimed to make a connection
between gaming and addiction, no proof was ever provided.

A recent tip to Boing Boing
from Michael Geist reveals some new leaks related from the
New Zealand government about their skepticism of international copyright laws being pushed by a certain country.
Specifically, the leaked documents reveal the NZ government’s doubts about the U.S.'s push to change the level of
protection the country affords "technical protection measures" (TPMs, DRM, or digital locks).

The U.S. wants
NZ to make jailbreaking illegal. Interestingly enough, while the U.S. pushes for new jailbreaking rules in other countries
around the world, at home the U.S. copyright office recently suspended the restriction on jailbreaking iPhones for three
years.. Read More

The Panorama episode aired on BBC One in the UK earlier this evening. For anyone that does not live in
the UK, the show has made its way to YouTube in two parts (thanks to Andrew Eisen for the tip).

We will spare
you the commentary on the show - watch it and judge for yourselves if Panorama producers were fair in their report on video
game addiction. On a related note, Shoutboxer beemoh points out this discussion thread on the BBC
web site about the program.

UK-based video game industry trade group UKIE issued a statement today praising UK Secretary of State for
Culture, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt's proposal on a high-speed broadband roll out in the United Kingdom. The plan calls for
creating infrastructure in the country that would give "every community in the UK" access to "super-
fast" broadband by 2015.

"The UK's games and interactive entertainment industry is a highly skilled,
digital industry spread throughout the UK," said Michael Rawlinson, Director General of UKIE. "It needs the
technological infrastructure of super-fast broadband to thrive and develop ever more sophisticated forms of interactive
entertainment, and to allow new business start-ups to grow and flourish." Read
More

Game industry veteran Brent Knowles has joined the Empire Avenue team today. Empire Avenue is a social
stock market game where users trade shares in each other. Empire Avenue says that Knowles "will be working closely with
Empire Avenue to further refine, enhance and generally totally-awesomeify its ever-so-addictive Social Stock Market
Game."

Knowles is a former BioWare developer, who most recently served as the Lead Designer and Creative Director
on the studio’s action-RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. Knowles other credits include Co-Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights,
Lead Designer on the Neverwinter Nights expansions, a Designer on Baldur’s Gate II, and design work on Jade Empire.
Read More

In an interview with GameIndustry.biz Panorama producer and director Emeka Onono, explains why the BBC news program decided to
tackle the subject of game addiction. While Onono claims that the program is not "anti-gaming," his comments to
GI.biz do not sound game industry friendly.

"What we've said is there's a potential for things in games to be
addictive," he explains to GamesIndustry.biz. "There is a potential there. And that's something that the
industry's always doggedly denied. The fact is it's there and however small or large that possibility is it needs to be
researched and acknowledged."

Onono also accuses a segment of the games industry of being "very
defensive" on the issue of addiction: Read More

According to data gathered by internet research firm ComScore, Cyber Monday saw the heaviest online
spending day in history. Gian Fulgoni, the chairperson of the organization, said that Cyber Monday was "a historic day
for e-commerce."

How momentous an occasion? How historic? According to the data, online retailers made $1.028
billion for the day, up 16 percent from a year ago. That number is a milestone for online retailers because it is the very
first time that online one-day sales surpassed the billion-dollar mark.

"The online holiday shopping season
has clearly gotten off to a very strong start, which is welcome news," said Fulgoni.”At the same time, it
is important to note that some of the early strength in consumer spending is almost certainly the result of retailers'
heavier-than-normal promotional and discounting activity at this early point in the season." Read
More